Tomb Raider DLC content meant for original game

Eidos hasn't stopped having problems with the Tomb Raider license yet it seems and, straight after word comes in that poor sales for Tomb Raider: Underworld have led to lay-offs at Crystal Dynamics and a planned re-design for Lara, more scandals are starting to break.

According to Eric Lindstrom, the creative director behind Lara's latest outing and one of the unfortunate casualties of the recent cull, the downloadable content that is planned for Tomb Raider: Underworld is made of levels that were cut from the full game due to time constraints imposed by Eidos.

"The content of DLC was absolutely not held back from Underworld for the purpose of selling later down the road...I needed to find a way to cut enough days from the schedule in a manner that would not rip a hole in the game that would take time to sew up," Lindstrom said on the Tomb Raider forums

"Even if I was told on that day that we would never ever make a downloabable level, I still would have had to cut it," he added.

Eric goes on to to say that a number of features were cut from the game too because of time constraints, such as Replay Level, Replay Cinematic, cheats and unlockable items. Apparently Lara had a full set of unlockable costumes - everything from sharks to tomatoes - but these were never implemented as time had to be focused else where.

That said, though Underworld may have under-sold a fair bit in Eidos' eyes, the game isn't all that bad and is still projected to sell around 2.5 million copies.